Mike S. May 23, 2019
Riot Games and its parent company Tencent Holdings Ltd are working on a mobile version of League of Legends according to a report from Reuters.
The report states that while the mobile version of LoL has been in the works for over a year, it still isn’t close to completion and is not expected to launch in 2019. This has supposedly been a long time coming, with Riot reportedly rejecting the idea of developing a mobile version of LoL years ago.
Exact details of what the game will be like were scarce, but it is probably fair to expect that Riot, and fans, would want a mobile version of the game to be as close to the PC version as possible. While cross platform play with those on PC probably wouldn’t be realistic given the potential difference in input accuracy, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine having a near identical version of LoL on mobile with how powerful many mobile devices now are.
Of course, Tencent already has a successful mobile MOBA in the form of Arena of Valor, also known as Honor of Kings in China. While the game struggled to hit numbers comparable to League of Legends in the West, in the East and particularly in China it has been a massive success and one of the biggest games in the region.
According to research firm Newzoo, Honor of Kings had 140 million active monthly users in March.
The report states that Tencent developed Honor of Kings after Riot initially declined to make a League of Legends mobile title years ago, and that the launch of Arena of Valor in the West increased tensions between the two companies as Tencent was effectively launching a rival product to LoL.
Neither Tencent nor Riot has addressed the report, or mentioned anything to do with League of Legends coming to mobile. But that isn’t surprising with the game reportedly not set to launch this year, as Riot tends not to announce things that far in advance.